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The impact of wildland fire smoke on air quality and health is an issue growing in importance to many health officials across the country, as well as federal, state and local decision-makers. This webinar gives an overview of EPA’s tools and resources available to provide public…
Person: Long
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Mapping, Models, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, public health, wildland fire, wildfire, EPA - Environmental Protection Agency, mitigation, air pollution, health risk

The literature-spanning several recent decades-describes numerous attempts to characterize the efficacy of cumulonimbus 'Cb' convection as a pollutant pathway connecting the planetary BL to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). The relatively new discovery of…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: aerosols, convection, cloud, cumulonimbus

Smoke from fire is a local, regional and often international issue that is growing in complexity as competition for airshed resources increases. BlueSky is a smoke modeling framework designed to help address this problem by enabling simulations of the cumulative smoke impacts…
Person:
Year: 2009
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: air quality, BlueSky, British Columbia, Canada, Cascades Range, competition, cropland fires, ecosystem dynamics, fire case histories, fire management, fire regimes, fire size, fuel loading, fuel management, Idaho, land management, Montana, Oregon, remote sensing, smoke management, Washington, wildfires, BlueSky Modeling Framework, FERA - Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team

This paper presents an operational approach to predicting fire growth for wildland fires in Canada. The approach addresses data assimilation to provide predictions in a timely and efficient manner. Fuels and elevation grids, forecast weather, and active fire locations are…
Person:
Year: 2009
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Fire Ecology, Emissions and Smoke, Fuels, Models, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: Alberta, Canada, cover, elevation, fire case histories, fire danger rating, fire growth, fire management, fire size, forest management, fuel management, fuel types, ignition, national parks, Northwest Territories, remote sensing, Saskatchewan, temperature, wildfires, wind, wood, fire detection, fire-growth modelling, Wood Buffalo National Park

A means of determining air emission source regions adversely influencing the city of Prince George, British Columbia, Canada from potential burning of isolated piles of mountain pine beetle-killed lodge pole pine is presented. The analysis uses the CALPUFF atmospheric dispersion…
Person:
Year: 2009
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Ecology, Mapping, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: air quality, British Columbia, burning permits, Canada, Dendroctonus ponderosae, fire exclusion, fire management, forest management, human caused fires, insects, mortality, pine, plant diseases, slash, smoke management, wind, wood, airshed, CALPUFF, influence region, dispersion modeling

This seminar is part of the USFS Missoula Fire Lab Seminar Series. The National Weather Service (NWS) Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis (RTMA) has been developed to provide a national standard Analysis of Record (AoR) for large scale verification and bias-correction efforts. The RTMA…
Person: Leach
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Models, Safety, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: RTMA - Real Time Mesoscale Analysis, URMA - Un-Restricted Mesoscale Analysis, AoR - Analysis of Record, atmospheric moisture, ARA - Air Resource Advisor, air quality, ADI - Atmospheric Dispersion Index, LVORI - Low Visibility Occurrence Risk Index, visibility, health impacts

Deforestation from timber harvests and farmland conversions have led to 565 GtCO2 (billion tons of carbon dioxide) being emitted into the atmosphere. Taking into account natural regeneration on forestland, Houghton (2003, 2008) and Houghton et al. (2012) estimate that…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Economics, Emissions and Smoke
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: climate change, land use change, forest carbon, carbon emissions, deforestation, fire management

Carbon monoxide (CO) exposure levels encountered by wildland firefighters (WLFs) throughout their work shift can change considerably within a few minutes due to the varied tasks that are performed and the changing environmental and fire conditions encountered throughout the day…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: firefighters, smoke exposure, CO - carbon monoxide, carboxyhemoglobin, data loggers, elevation, sawyer, shift length

Biomass mapping is used in variety of applications including carbon assessments, emission inventories, and wildland fire and fuel planning. Single values are often applied to individual pixels to represent biomass of classified vegetation, but each biomass estimate has…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Mapping, Models, Planning
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: C - carbon, biomass, remote sensing, uncertainty, wildland fuel, Canada, fire management

The Advanced Fire Environment Learning Unit (AFELU) will host three speakers to talk about Predictive Services comparison tools (Robert Ziel, Alaska Fire Science Consortium), predicting fire behavior in Alaska (Chris Moore, Alaska Fire Service), and smoke tools (Pete Lahm, US…
Person: Ziel, Moore, Lahm
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Hazard and Risk, Mapping, Models, Safety, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: drought, landscape flammability, precipitation, NDVI - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, PDI - Palmer Drought Index, FSPro - Fire Spread Probability, 2019 fire season, acres burned, ERC - Energy Release Component, wildfires, air quality, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, BlueSky

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has supported the development of a new resource for defining fuel loading across the variable landscapes of the US. The work entailed compiling existing data on fuel loadings categorized by Existing Vegetation Type (EVT). The data has been…
Person: French, Prichard, Kennedy, Billmire
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fuel loading, EVT - existing vegetation type, fuels database, fire operations research, smoke modeling

From the text ... 'So what is the number one reason that we're burning? What is the number one reason we treat fuels? Well, of course it's to protect the public from extremely high concentration of fine particulates associated with wildfire, right? And that's the number one…
Person:
Year: 2009
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: smoke effects, wildfires, air quality, hydrocarbons, ozone, fire management, forest management, smoke management, Barriers, fire frequency, fire management, Florida, St. Johns River Water Management District

From the text ... 'Because fire was such an important historic disturbance and is a large component in understanding regional differences in emissions, it is analogous to an elephant in the closet. One can think of fire frequency as the elephant. That is, it is an issue that is…
Person:
Year: 2009
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Occurrence, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fire frequency, air quality, fire management, forest management, smoke management

Since 2004, the National Center for Landscape Fire Analysis (NCLFA) has deployed broadband radio equipment coupled with strategic monitoring technologies to support management of wildland fires in remote areas of the western United States. Wireless broadband radios and…
Person:
Year: 2009
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Intelligence, Outreach, Weather
Region(s): Northern Rockies, Northwest
Keywords: fire case histories, wildfires, education, public information, remote sensing, Montana, Washington, fire management, communication, fire management, public outreach and education, remote cameras, surveillance, wireless technologies

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) initiated the Fire and Smoke Model Experiment (FASMEE) (https://sites.google.com/firenet.gov/fasmee/) by funding Project 15-S-01-01 to identify and collect a set of…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: FASMEE - Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, project management, large fire, experiments, fuel consumption, smoke modeling, fire modeling, energy release, plume rise, smoke transport, smoke dispersion, chemistry

A pair of three-day workshops were held in 2008 and 2009, designed for fire managers responsible for communicating and negotiating with state and local air quality regulators. The workshops were organized by the NWCG Smoke Committee, coordinated by the University of Idaho, and…
Person:
Year: 2009
Type: Project
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Communications, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Regulations and Legislation
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality regulations, smoke management, collaboration

Wildfire is an essential earth‐system process, impacting ecosystem processes and the carbon cycle. Forest fires are becoming more frequent and severe, yet gaps exist in the modeling of fire on vegetation and carbon dynamics. Strategies for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: C - carbon, climate change mitigation, forests, greenhouse gas emissions, tree biomass, biomass consumption, biomass combustion factors

Epidemiological studies consistently show an association between wildfire-related smoke exposure and adverse respiratory health. We conducted a systematic review of evidence in published literature pertaining to heterogeneity of respiratory effects from this exposure in North…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Safety
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest
Keywords: wildfires, respiratory health, heterogeneity, ratio of relative risk, public health

Forest ecosystems sequester approximately 12% of anthropogenic carbon emissions, and efforts to increase forest carbon uptake are central to climate change mitigation policy. Managing forests to store carbon has focused on increasing forested area, decreasing area lost to…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: carbon emissions, climate change, forest carbon, forest management, carbon management

Most of the previous investigations on the relationship between PM2.5 chemical characteristics and wildfire focused on the predictions of particle components concentrations or future pollution scenarios. Little research has focused on trends analyses based on large temporal…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Weather
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: Generalized Additive Models, air pollution, wildfires, PM2.5, speciation, particulate carbon

Smoke aerosols released from biomass burning greatly influence air quality, weather, and climate. The total particulate matter (TPM) of smoke aerosols has been demonstrated to be a linear function of fire radiative energy (FRE) during a period of biomass burning via a smoke…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: Indonesia, emission coefficient, MODIS - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, FRE - Fire Radiative Energy, smoke aerosols, PM - particulate matter, air quality, MODIS active fires

Smoke from human-induced fires such as prescribed fires can occasionally cause significant reduction in visibility on highways in the southern United States. Visibility reduction to less than three meters has been termed 'superfog' and environmental conditions that lead to its…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: superfog, visibility, liquid water content, CCN - cloud condensation nuclei

Wildland firefighters are exposed to wood smoke, which contains hazardous air pollutants, by suppressing thousands of wildfires across the U. S. each year. We estimated the relative risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality from existing PM2.5 exposure-response…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fire Prevention, Hazard and Risk, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: wildland fire, firefighters, PM - particulate matter, risk assessment, cardiovascular disease, lung diseases, firefighter health, smoke exposure

Seasonal-mean concentrations of particulate matter with diameters smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) have been decreasing across the United States (US) for several decades, with large reductions in spring and summer in the eastern US. In contrast, summertime-mean PM2.5 in the western…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: PM - particulate matter, PM2.5, fire frequency, area burned, smoke plumes, GEOS-Chem, GEOS-Chem CTM

Prescribed fire and wildfire in the Western US have long been critical ecological processes used by humans, specifically Native Americans, to manage the plant species, insects, and diseases present in a landscape. However, policies of fire suppression have led to a decrease in…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Prevention, Fuels, Hazard and Risk, Prescribed Fire, Restoration and Rehabilitation
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, fire suppression, literature review